


eighteen hundred and ninety six pieces of glass

by wrenkos



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Dark Comedy, Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Minor Character Death, Negative Thoughts, Pre-Canon, Pre-Game(s), Spoilers, Symbolism, i didn't mean for there to be so much symbolism but fuck there's a lot of symbolism in here, minor depictions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-10 10:23:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12909933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrenkos/pseuds/wrenkos
Summary: MAJOR NDRV3 SPOILERSThe 52nd season of Danganronpa is coming to its end, and the remaining students have to decide who lives and who dies, as well as what comes after that.





	eighteen hundred and ninety six pieces of glass

**Author's Note:**

> MAJOR NDRV3 SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE GAME (as stated in the desc!!)
> 
> so!! there's depiction of violence/death but not major but. still there and definitely present, so if you're not good with that then I suggest you turn back!! sorry!! there's also a lot of unreality themes, since. this is all a broadcasted killing game and all, so if you're not good with that then i suggest you turn back too. there will also be references to suicide and generally not nice thoughts, but relatively minor. 
> 
> this is unbeta'd, so all mistakes are mine!
> 
> [ edit 1/9/18: finally posted this to tumblr after a month bnnshs ]

It had been so, so tiring.

She didn’t know how to take it anymore. So, so many deaths, and she - _her,_ Tsumugi Shirogane, bland and plain and boring and just the Ultimate Seamstress - was one of the select few to make it so far. She didn’t know if she deserved it.

Five. Five, harrowing, time-consuming trials that made her just want to choke, suffocate, and die.

(Like the third victims.)

She remembered all their dying faces clearly, forever etched into her memory, whose faces she woke to screaming and crying in the dead of the night. The faces she had laughed with, cried with, the faces that were alive before instead of dead, dead, dead.

The surfer with light brown hair and kind words coupled with kind eyes, whose eyes stared dead and in pain when they discovered their strangled, dead body in the cafeteria. The makeup artist whom Tsumugi had laughed with and bonded, the same make-up artist who had broke, and told them all to burn in hell when all the evidence pointed to him before his blood was used as decorations in his execution.

The shogi player who was calm and composed and never spoke a peep, whose screams and cries for help fell onto deaf ears as they were locked in a room with poison in their veins. The nervous bartender who threw up at the sight of blood, the very same who created a murder where there would be no bleeding, and the one who broke down into tears and admitted to all his crimes through the second half of the trial.

The ballroom dancer who had a carefree laugh, who taught her how to dance and said words of encouragement to help her after the first murder in the gym, the one whose laughs were no more after choking on glass. The gardener who was arrogant and brash, the one who screamed words of defiance when accused in the first trial, the very same whose head was plunged underwater after being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the geologist whose laughs had echoed throughout the trial room at the very notion that they would kill somebody, whose laughs had slowly turned to sobbing and whose composure had broken to bits and pieces as their sins came to surface.

The romance novelist who had told her stories of being whisked away to a place far from here by a white knight once they escaped, who was whisked away to heaven after a bullet was placed into their skull. The prosecutor who had made them run in circles during their very own class trial, who had almost got away with murder had they not slipped knowledge only the killer would know into a statement by accident, who stayed composed until the very bitter end.

And the therapist who had told them all to live, told them all to keep on hoping, the one who had agreed to work with the fencer on their own murder with the intent to sentence them all to death.

All that remained - herself, the adventurer, the calligrapher, the historian, and the lockpicker, who all stood before the elevator doors which lead to where they had sentenced so many friends to death.

There was some sort of discussion going on, she thought dully, but she was too busy lost in her own thoughts to pay attention to anything. Why pay attention when she knew she wasn’t the mastermind? It was somebody else. If she didn’t pay attention, then she didn’t know, and then she wouldn’t have to lose one of her friends.  

She just wanted this to be over.

They hadn’t even _started_ the trial and she wanted it to be over already.

“Shirogane-san?”

Somebody was calling her name? She blinked. Or she was hallucinating again. Perhaps dreaming? The voices of the dead never seemed to stop asking her questions in her dreams.

“...Shirogane-san!”

A different voice this time. She looked up with tired eyes.

“...What?”

(Ah. That came out a bit harsher than expected, even with how soft-spoken she was.)

“Are you paying attention?”

“...Isn’t it plain to see? I’m not.”

The adventurer - Rantaro Amami, green hair, green eyes, the one who stayed calm in most situations, the leader - sighed, put his hands on his hips with a frown.

(Shirogane always thought he was being a bit melodramatic.)

“Well, can’t blame you. But we kinda can’t have that happening, because this is the final class trial and we’re going to end this killing game.”

“Okay.”  

She’s so, so tired.

(It’s likely obvious at this point.)  

Rantaro motions to the others, “go on ahead. I want to tell her something. Y’know, prep talk.”

The lockpicker - Takaaki Araki - whistles. Rantaro kicks them in the shin, and they get going hurriedly, along with the two other students.

Now it’s just the two of them.

Rantaro takes a deep breath.

“I don’t think you’re the mastermind.”

She blinks. Her mind is such a mess she’s not sure if she hears him correctly.

“You--”

“Yeah. I have an inkling as to how to find the mastermind out, and if I’m right, then you’re not them.”

She squints. “W-Well--”

He laughs awkwardly, “Sorry, sorry, this is probably a little out of the blue, but…” he makes a hand gesture, “...Felt like it was appropriate to tell you.”

“Why?”

He tapped his forehead, “Mm, I don't know. Intuition? Good to know somebody trusts in you, yeah?”

She’s at a loss for words, really. What to say? There’s certainly a lot of things that are running through her head. Mostly confusion.

So.

He’s saying that he trusts in her, that he believes she’s not the mastermind. (Which she isn’t, so he’s right.) Just out of the blue, and, considering who he was and how he acted, that would mean…?

“Are you asking me to trust you?”

He blinks. Thinks for a moment, then grins.

“Yeah, sort of.”

* * *

There’s laughing, somewhere in the courtroom. It’s eerie, it’s hideous, it’s something she didn’t think she’d hear, and it’s something she wants to unhear, because --

Because it’s just after Rantaro essentially spread all the evidence out on the table, looked at the person right across from him, and --

And asked them in the mastermind.

And all the bells in her head are screaming run, all the voices in her head are yelling for her to _leave,_ to get the hell _out_ of the room, and all the bones in her body refuse to move, refuse to budge, and stay rooted in place.

All she can do is stare at the calligrapher across from her, the calligrapher who was currently _howling_ with non-stop laughter that was so, so, _wrong,_ that made _her_ want to break down crying and let loose the scream that was building up in the back of her throat as she looked at the (former?) _friend_ whom she had come to know, a person who she _trusted._

“H-Holy shit, dude…”

Her brain screams in agreement with the lockpicker's statement - _holy shit, dude, what the everlasting fuck, what the actual, genuine, fuck is this,_ **_dude_ ** \- and still, her legs refuse to move and her mouth refuses to open, and her mouth remains a thin line as she stares.

“Hey, I’m talking to--”

“ _God,_ you’re fucking _hilarious!”_ the calligrapher wheezes out, and they’re bent over their podium, gripping it out with a grin that _should not be there when asked if you’re the mastermind,_ “Kudos to whoever wrote you, because _god,_ do you _hear_ yourself? Little ol’ _me_ ? Izumi Fukumoto? Ultimate Adventurer my _ass,_ more like comedian, pretty boy!”

And, just as how sudden the laughing starts, it stops like it never happened in the first place, and Izumi regains posture within _seconds,_ and their face is back to the neutral expression that hides all signs of laughter and delight that were shown mere moments ago. “Sorry. Lost it for a bit there. Me? The mastermind? I think you’re mistaken.”

They stare. Rantaro is at a loss for words. She’s at a loss for words. The lockpicker laughs nervously, and the historian - quiet, nervous, but capable Misato Murakami, whom had promised she wouldn’t cry after the fourth trial - was now crying out of fear.

(Tsumugi finds herself very tempted to follow suit.)

Instead, she opens her mouth, wanting to say, _then what was that?_ or say, _there’s a reason to why you did that, right?_ but she’s too scared. Too scared to say anything, and her brain is too focused on freaking out to put together a coherent sentence.

“T-Then...what was that just now?”

Amami’s voice.

This, she realizes, is the first time she’s seen the adventurer caught off guard. Not that she could blame him, of course, this is something she, too, was not expecting. And even if he had put together his plan in that smart brain of his, even _he_ would have trouble processing what just happened.

The calligrapher tilts their head to the side. “That? I’m humoring you. Shouldn’t you all be laughing along with me, since that’s honestly a stupid idea?”

The lockpicker stops laughing.

“T-That...sounded like a confession more than anything...”

All eyes turn to her, and she wants to curl up into a ball and just die right then and there. Her and her big mouth, her and blurting out words.

“Oh? How so?”

She chews her lip. Maybe she should just say, _oh, you know, a joke! Nevermind, guys,_ or laugh it off, or just break down crying into tears. (She thinks that she’s already crying a bit, anyways.)

But she hugs herself, as if she’ll break into a thousand little pieces of glass if she doesn’t, and continues.

“...y-you,” now, it’s like her hands and her fingers are turning into little glass shards, or maybe her brain is, because she’s falling apart because she _doesn’t want to say this,_ and doesn’t want to figure out what it could possibly mean, because those little glass shards in her brain are now breaking her apart and whispering thoughts she doesn’t want to know or hear or _think about._  “...said ‘who wrote you’, r-right?”

Silence.

(To her left, she hears a faint ‘oh, yeah, they did say that’, and she wants to kick herself because anybody else could have said that but no, she just had to be the one to say that and now it’s like there’s a thousand glass shards behind her eyes because she’s going to start crying very, very soon.)

“Ah.” Izumi thinks for a moment, “Yeah, I did say that. Guess I messed up, huh? ‘Who wrote you’. Hmm, hmm? What could that possibly mean?”

“That you know something we don’t.”

Amami’s voice this time, loud and clear. He’s regained posture, now.

 _"Annnd_ ?” they drag out the word. She decides that she doesn’t like the word ‘and’ anymore. “And what, pray tell, does _that_ mean?”

“T...T-That,” The historian is meek, and her voice is quiet, “...i-implies that Amami-kun is right and you’re. The mastermind, F-Fukumoto-san.”

“Because,” Tsumugi finds herself saying, and her voice is shaking, and there’s glass at the back of her throat now, “O-Only the mastermind would...know stuff that we don’t, right?”

“Hmm, hmm.” Fukumoto fiddles with their shirt sleeve, “ _Well._ Well, well, well. You’re all written to be quite smart, huh? Guess I’m written to give up riiight about now, yeah, Monomono _kuuuma_?”

Monokuma blinks. Somewhere, the glass in her brain says, they’ve never called Monokuma that before. It was always something else. Something spiteful.

There is no response from the bear.

Izumi opens their mouth to say something again, and -

“Why?”

Takaaki’s voice is shaking. So, so very different from the confident, laid-back voice that never wavered. (Perhaps they have glass in their throat, too?) “Fukumoto-san. Why would you…? You were...you were always...not this.”

(Somewhere in her head, the glass replies, ‘no shit, Sherlock’. She wants to laugh but nothing comes out.)

Fukumoto let’s out a snicker, and her brain is screaming run now, again. “Fukumoto-san this, Fukumoto-san that! Goooodddd, how repetitive!”

“W-What?”

“I mean, come _on._ Less about Izumi Fukumoto! Who _cares_ if I’m the mastermind! Let’s talk about what I said! Written? 'Who wrote you’? Hmm, what could that possibly mean?”

“You--”

“With all due respect, Rantaro, shut up. You’re a lovely, well written character, and I understand you’re the leader of this group, but please, the supporting characters need to get their lines in, too. Just enough to meet status quo.”

She finds herself saying, “What--”

“And you, _you!_ Shirogane-san!” they point to her, and the glass in her brain cuts off all of the functions of movement, and she’s frozen in place. “They really got to give you credit, you know?! You’re smarter than you look, and you’ve got glasses on!”

“W-What does that have to do with anyth--”

“Because you’re onto something, aren’t you? That’s why you brought what I said up, didn’t you?”

The glass shards make her mind numb this time.

All eyes turned to her.

She opens her mouth, and the glass stops her from speaking.

“Getting cold feet? Come oonn, I know you’re capable of saying whatever you’re thinking.”

And she wants to say, _then I wouldn’t be saying anything,_ because honestly at this point all her thoughts aren’t even hers anymore - they’re the little, negative voices in her head that tell her to go die and that she deserves to suffer.

Instead, she says; “...‘Whoever wrote you’...implies we’re written.”

“And?? Whatever could _that_ mean?”

“...T-Think a book,” her voice is shaking so, so much now. The shards make it hard to think, and even harder to communicate her thoughts, it seems. “...As in, written a book?”

Rantaro’s gaze, which was unreadable - now his eyes widen in horror with what she said and what it meant.

“You mean--”

“Y-Yeah. A book, or something where you _w-write…_ ” she bit her lip. “...Books are...fictional.”

There’s silence. The glass laughs at her, laughs, because of the looks on their faces, and laughs at her, because if she kept her mouth shut then they’d all be ignorantly blissful.

There’s silence, and then -

And then the laughing starts again. This time, Takaaki joins in, but Tsumugi suspects it’s more of a nervous reflex more than anything.

The glass in her brain shuts up, and this time, tells her to run away again.

“Dong dong ding!” Izumi laughs, laughs, like it’s the best joke they’ve ever cracked, as if this was something absolutely delightful and was appropriate to laugh at. “Fictional. Fictional! You’re all fictional! Born to blossom, born to perish!”

“...What? No. That--” Rantaro looks around, and the cracks in that mask of his (perhaps that’s glass, too?) begin to show. “Impossible. That can’t...that…”

“Oohhh, are you despairing?” Izumi giggles this time, and claps their hands, “Yes, yes! You, Rantaro, lucky child number thirteen? The _real_ Rantaro Amami is an only child! Your sisters? The ones you _lost_ around _the globe?_ They’re dead! _Dead,_ I say! Didn’t exist in the first place!”

“N-No. That - you’re -” the panic is evident, now. “That’s. That’s wrong. You’re wro--”

“Oh, don’t ‘you’ve got that wrong’ me, mister,” they cross their arms, “This is a game show, broadcasting a killing game, and this is season fifty two, and you’re the surviving contestants.”

Fifty two?

She begins to say, “what,” but --

“You two, out of all people, should know that!” They cackle out the words this time, and points to Rantaro and herself, “A pair of double survivors! It’s never happened before, so in season 51 they let two in and no ultimate survivor, and here you two are, again, as final contestants! Lucky, lucky!”

“W-What are you--”

“Hmm. Maybe a little somebody will jog your memories…?” they clap their hands together, “Monokuma, dear? Smokescreen, please?”

“Yeah, yeah,” the bear replies, “You don’t have to tell me twice! I’m on it!”

And, with the press of a button she didn’t know existed, smoke fills the room, and she finds herself unable to see anything in front of her, save for the light and dark greys it. And the glass is back in her mind again, and it tells her that this is poisonous gas, and it whispers that maybe this is the time when she dies - maybe she’ll die like the second victim, and it tells her that this is a fitting end, and that she should have died when she was still ignorant.

She coughs, and the glass shards refuse to come out of her throat, and she hears the others cough, too.

And the smoke clears as quickly as it came, and --

Standing in the place of Izumi Fukumoto is a girl with pink pigtails and a bright smile, and the glass begins to hurt that much more.

All her thoughts die to the glass, and all is left is one thought - two words, and a name she doesn’t know what it’s from.

“Junko Enoshima.”

And she realizes that it’s _her_ voice that shows no emotion at all, and it _scares_ her because she feels like she’s supposed to feel something, something rather than _nothingness._

“Correct!” Enoshima (it’s not Fukumoto? Did they exist anymore? Perhaps they were fiction, too? Or maybe, maybe, they were fiction in her fiction brain, maybe they were somebody just made up by the glass! An elaborate robot? Perhaps a hallucination?) laughs, “Junko Enoshima the 52nd here, hello, hello! I’m never going to die, baby!”

Rantaro stares, and it seems he’s in the same situation as her.

Only remember a name. Nothing else.

Just blank thoughts.

“52nd?” Misato asks nervously, and the historian’s gaze shifts from side to side, as if lingering on one spot would kill her, “S...S-So you weren’t joking when you s-said there were f-fifty two seasons already?”

“Oh, _honey,_ no,” Junko laughed, “I would never lie! That’s for next time. This, folks, is the fifty-second season of Danganronpa, and I, Junko Enoshima, make my grand return as the mastermind once more! This is a killing game! You’re all being watched!”

“Watched? What--”

“Oh, absolutely _dreadful,_ I know,” she sighed dramatically, “Watched! Recorded! Some tweaks here and there, murder scenes omitted, but more or less, you’re all watched! This is being broadcasted! And it’s a big hit, lemme tell ya--”

“A-A big hit? This...t-this is popular?”

She laughs at that, “Of course it is, dear darling Takaaki-kun! You’ve got quite a few fans yourself, in fact! Congratulations! Looks like signing up for this thing did just what the real Takaaki Araki wanted: being popular!”

“That--”

“Feeling doubtful? Oh, can’t say I know the feeling, but I know it when I see it! So I got proof,” they spin around to face Monokuma, “Hey, bear-bear! The tapes, please!”

“Yeah, yeah,” the bear replies, and a tape rolls.

Tsumugi is greeted with a video, and her face is on it.

No, that can’t be right. That’s not her uniform.

And yet - yet that’s her.

Same face, same voice, and --

 _“Hi, I’m Tsumugi Shirogane, number 844…”_ the her on the screen shifts from foot to foot. _“Um...I want to be the Ultimate Bartender. Or seamstress! Both works, um, w-whatever you think is best.”_

Same voice?

What? No.

This?

What was this?

This? This was -

This wasn’t right.

This wasn’t right.

_This wasn’t right._

Wasn’t? No, couldn’t. Couldn’t be right, absolutely could not be right, this couldn’t be this couldn’t be it can’t be, no it can’t. It’s one hundred, one thousand, absolutely not right and incorrect and definitely not real.

Real, she thinks. Real, she realizes.

Real, real, real, real, real real realreal _realrealreal._ It’s as if she’s written the word a hundred thousand times over and it’s looking funny and not like a word anymore.

She isn’t real? Yes, she’s fiction. The words came out from her own mouth minutes (seconds? Hours? She isn’t sure anymore. She isn’t sure about a lot of things at this point) ago, and here she is, realizing it again and again and again from this dumb, stupid video.

The pieces of glass in her head - a thousand pieces of glass? Perhaps now, it’s more fitting to say fifty two. Maybe eight hundred and forty four is more appropriate. Or all added up? If they were added would she say one thousand plus eight hundred and forty four plus fifty two, or would she say eighteen hundred and ninety-six? One thousand eight hundred and ninety-six, maybe?

Maybe she should say one zero zero zero plus (sign?) one eight four four plus five two, which equals to one eight nine six.

Perhaps she should take it down a notch and say ‘a lot’?

She decides to be vague and stick to ‘pieces of glass’ and ‘glass pieces’.

She wishes there were none, but alas, that is not the case, as they are there and present and not going away anytime soon - whisper to her that perhaps there’s some truth to the video. Since that is her, as wrong and incorrect as it is, so there has to be some ‘truth’, even if the ‘truth’ is that it is fabricated, but something is there.

There is a truth to the video, and she doesn’t want to know it.

She wants it to stop.

She wants it to stop, for the world to put itself on pause, for the stars to all simultaneously fall at once and maybe knock her right on the head and kill her immediately.

Simply put, at that moment in time, she wanted the video to stop and her life to end.

Neither happened.

The video kept rolling.

Tsumugi thinks - and this time it isn’t the glass - that it can’t get any worse than this.

 _“Um...I-I’d be great in a killing game because I’m so plain!”_ and the girl on the screen (Tsumugi Shirogane? Is that her? But that can’t be. Because she doesn’t remember this, so that possibility is impossible, right?) giggles, and the glass is back and screaming at her to run. _“Nobody ever notices me, you know? It’s almost surprising how I got let in here, actually, but I could use this to my advantage! I could kill somebody, and since most people really just forget I exist it’d be a piece of cake getting away with it!”_

No no no no no --

This was incorrect. This was incorrect. This was incorrect.

 _“But even if they did realize I’m not dead, nobody would think I’m the culprit because I’m so nice. I mean,”_ she laughs this time, _“Most people don’t think I’m into Danganronpa! But I’m a big, long-time fan of the series!”_

No no no no no _no no_ **_no --_ **

This was wrong. This was wrong.

Wrong.

Wrong wrong wrong wrong _wrong_.

The girl on the screen sighs dreamily, _“But detectives like Kirigiri-san are so smart...of course they’d figure out who the culprit is, right? In that case, I have a lot of ideas of how an Ultimate bartender or seamstress could be executed! For a bartender, you could get some of your blood squeezed out of you, and then get it mixed with some poison and then die that way! Or, or--”_

The second trial’s execution flashes in her mind. That was how the bartender, the culprit, had died.

_“For a seamstress, you could get poked and stabbed to death! Although I guess that’s happened a couple of times, huh. For a seamstress, maybe you could sew a bunch of designs, and then your fingers start breaking up and then you get killed when you can’t sew anymore because your hands have bled away? But either way! It’d be super horrible and full of despair for the audience!”_

The glass screams for her to run. She wholeheartedly agrees.

This was so, so, so, so, _so wrong._ That can’t be her. She would never say that.

And yet.  

And yet.

_And yet._

And yet that was how the bartender had died, and she was a seamstress, and it would make sense if this was all not real, because that would explain how Monokuma existed and that would explain why they were all locked up in a school killing each other.

She wishes that the glass had thought that, not her.

She had thought it couldn’t get worse.

_It got worse._

The video ends, and the monitor behind Junko Enoshima shuts itself off.

All eyes turn to her.

She can’t breath. She can’t breath, she can’t think, and she can’t do _anything_ anymore because she can’t function.

She musters out three words, and she prays that nobody else asks her anything or says anything more.

“That wasn’t m-me.”

(If only it were that easy.)

“Oh, Tsumugi Shirogane, honey, _dear_!” Junko Enoshima says in a sing-song voice, “That was one hundred percent you and this footage is one hundred percent real, unlike any of you! Doesn’t that fill you with despair?”

She wants to reply, _what else would I be filled with,_ wants to say sarcastically _no, I’m perfectly fine with this,_ wants to flip her middle finger up towards Junko Enoshima, towards that girl in the video, towards the real world, and shout _fuck you_ to the fifty one seasons of Danganronpa that had assumedly already aired, and beat the living _shit_ out of the fifty second season of the thing that she was in.

“Anyways. So we’ve established you’re all fake. Y’all get me?”

She wants to _scream_ but --

“Y-You’re lying,” Misato says quietly, and she’s shaking so hard Tsumugi’s scared she’ll fall down and break into little pieces at any given moment, “You. Y-You have to be lying. No, I - Shirogane-san w-wouldn’t do--”

“You know, Misato, you were one of my biggest fans. Dressed up as me at your audition! What a ways’ you’ve come, huh?”

“No,” the historian says, and the seamstress can practically _see_ the scream rising in her throat, “No, you’re. You’re. You’re lying. You’re not - you’re n-not. Telling the t-truth right now, y-you--”

Enoshima let’s out a cackle. “The _truth?!_ God, this is season fifty fucking two, not the next! The _truth_ is, my _dear_ little Misato Murakami-chan, is that. You’re. Not. Real.”

“Y-You’re lying!” she shouts, and her voice is so shaky (so shaky it’s almost pitiful, the glass says,) and she bites her lip before continuing, “I. I feel real. I can’t be...f-fake. You’re lying. P-Please stop. T-The joke wasn’t even f-funny in the first--”

“Oh, I see.” the mastermind tilts her head to the side, “Feel real, huh? Yeah. Are you one of the people that mix dreams up with reality?”

Misato opens her mouth to speak,

And Junko lets out another disgusting laugh, and says in Fukumoto’s (is that the real person, or is that the disguise?) voice;

“You guys are fake, but your real bodies are real, you get me? You feel real because your bodies are real! Your consciousness? Made up! Written characters! Hell, programmed!”

“I--”

“And what does that mean for all the people who died? They were fake! Fake, fake, fake. But their real bodies are stuck in comas because god, y'know, teens think sleep is really nice!”

Comas.

But not dead?

“Comas?” Rantaro echoes, and it’s the first time he’s talked in awhile. “They’re - they’re alive?”

“Mmmmmmmmm,” Junko thinks, puts a finger to her chin, “Yeeah, not sure about that one, avocado man. I said ‘in a coma’, and you can draw some conclusions from that, hmm?”

Rantaro glares.

“S-So,” the lockpickers’ voice is a lot more quiet now - understandable. Had she not been forcing herself so much to speak, her voice would be long gone and dead by now. “W-We aren’t real. Our...bodies are. And our…” their voice trails off, “F-Friends? They’re in c-comas, yeah, but...h-how w-would we get to them? O-Or our real bodies?”

Good question.

(Does she want to know the answer?)

Enoshima laughs, and she’s thankful that it’s not in Fukumoto’s voice again - because god, that just makes the glass in her chest hurt and hurt and _hurt,_ “Good question, good one there. Had I not been asked that before, I would have laughed a lot more, but honestly, that question is to be expected. Boring! But, but. You know? The answer to that is totally despairing, so heeeeere I go!!”

(She thinks, _no, please don’t go ahead and say what you’re about to say, because I feel like I don’t want to know.)_

“Well, obviously, the way to meet somebody in a coma is to go into a coma yourself!”

She’s about to scream, she realizes. She opens her mouth and--

“What?”

Rantaro’s voice comes out harsher than it usually is, so to him that’s like a scream, right?

The mastermind tilts her head to the side, with an almost neutral, unfazed expression - eerie, very eerie, and she doesn’t want to see that expression at all on anyone anymore, “Hmm? What’s so weird about that? You know, like, the only way to see somebody who’s dead is to, like, die yourself! Right?”

Tsumugi opens her mouth and the glass prevents her from saying anything. Not like she has any words to reply to that in the first place, but, alas.

“ _But,_ unfortunately for you, we’ve only got three limited seats to see ‘em! Well, technically two, since I’m taking one because lord, I would like to get knocked the _fuck_ out before I appear again next season! Am I relatable or am I _absolutely_ relatable, kids?!”

Junko Enoshima doesn’t make any sense. Her logic is too hard to follow, and she’s scared and definitely doesn’t want to know what goes on in her brain.

“W-Why would --” her voice cracks, “W-Why would we want to s-see them? I-I mean, I u-understand that we all want to see our dead friends, but. Your logic is--”

“Ding ding! Another good question to Shirogane-san! Jeez, y’all, keep up! I know I told you to shut up, earlier, Rantaro, but _gosh!_ You’re gonna lose your title of protagonist pretty soon! Your fanbase will riot!”

“My _what--”_

“But the answer to that question is,” and the teasing, sing-song voice is now gone, replaced with a serious, strict tone, “Because if two of you aren’t going to go meet them in this coma party in hell, then _all_ of you will and _none_ of you will escape.”

Her brain doesn’t even finish _processing_ the words, and Junko keeps on going, and Shirogane wants her to stop, stop, _stop_ \--

“‘Oh, but Enoshima-san’,” she drawls out in a mimicking tone, “‘Can’t we see our comatose friends without being comatose?’ The answer to that question is; technically, yup! Can’t really talk to them, but if you wanna get physical with somebody, by all means! But only two of y’all will be able to do that, and those two alone will escape!”

She wishes she would just be quiet already --

The mastermind takes in a deep breath and sighs dramatically, “Oh, dear me. Those two poor, poor survivors. Who, oh who, are they going to be? Dare I say, whomst? It’s basically first come first serve, and y’all better decide soon, since I’m kinda getting a little bored of you all going ‘oh no! You mean I’ve got a fanbase and people are watching my friends die??’ because come _on,_ guys, that’s not even the worst thing that could happen! We didn’t even put cameras in the washroom and not a _single_ one of you of you got laid!”

(Part of her, the part that is denying the fact that everything is happening and is convinced that everything happening before her is a hallucination that is a result of drugs or alcohol or lack of sleep, says that that could be considered unfortunate in some sense.)

“What the fuck--”

Enoshima cuts Amami off (and Shirogane thinks that he rarely ever swears, but then the glass says that a lot of rare things are happening right now, so she lets it go) and suddenly, has a pair of glasses on her face, and is adjusting it, as if she was some sort of stuck-up professor that was scolding her students, “Now, now, Amami-kun. No need to lose your cool! Anyways, who’s it going to be? I’m _waiiiiiting_.”

“We’re not going to--”

“You have ten minutes!”

That certainly shuts Rantaro up.

Enoshima presses a button, and a timer shows behind her.

(9 minutes 57 seconds.)

She stares at the timer.

She thinks, maybe if she closes her eyes and opens them again, she’ll wake up from this nightmare and life would be normal again.

(9 minutes 56 seconds.)

It doesn’t work.

(9 minutes 55 seconds.)

Two out of the four of them had to go. Two out of the four of them had to be sent to a comatose state to “be with their friends” and the other two, sole survivors, had to bear the weight of living when their friends had died.

(9 minutes 53 seconds.)

It’s quiet. What is there to say?

(9 minutes 52 seconds.)

A thought plays through her head, and she’s too tired to sort through what is her thinking and what is an intrusive painful thought. They could either pick two to die or -

Or -

(9 minutes 48 seconds,)

Or they could all go.

(9 minutes 47 seconds.)

(She thinks, she’ll be able to see all her friends again.)

(She thinks, she’s so tired that she doesn’t care anymore.)

She thinks, she shouldn’t live and --

“I’ll go.”

Her mind screeches to a stop.

That wasn’t her voice that spoke just now. No, no, it came to her left -

“A-Araki-kun?”

And that isn’t her voice, either, that’s the historian, and the historian is staring at Takaaki, and she’s staring at the lockpicker as well, and she opens her mouth to speak and no words come out and everything is dead quiet, and she doesn’t know what to say and --

“No, no, you--”

Panic. Amami’s voice.

“Rantaro, man, don’t worry about it.”

Somewhere in her hazy mind she registers the fact that Araki dropped honorifics, and--

They let out a hollow, dead sounding laugh, “I should have died a long time ago. Third, second - no. I should have been the first to go.”

A memory. During the first trial, Takaaki had believed in the culprit until the very end, and--

“Don’t, T-Takaaki,” the adventurer begins to say, and his voice cracks, “Don’t--”

“Don’t say that? Rantaro, I’m sending myself to my death.” they crack a smile, one of those signature smiles of theirs, “You should live, man. You deserve it.”

Rantaro Amami is falling apart, and she can see all the cracks begin to form and he’s shattering and breaking and there’s nothing left to hold him together anymore.

“P-Please don’t--”

Tsumugi finds herself agreeing, that he should live. She finds herself about to open her mouth but before a word can get out --

“I,”

She turns her head to Murakami, who has forced a smile onto her face, but her eyes give it away.

“I, um,”

Realization dawns.

No. _No_. Not--

“I’ll. I’ll go too.”

Her entire world crumbles to dust in an instant. She can see Amami’s world has done the same.

Murakami bites her lip, “I agree w-with Ara- _Takaaki,_ ” she corrects herself, and Tsumugi wants to _scream_ , because she doesn’t want _now_ to be the time when they all drop honorifics, “You should live, Rantaro. And...you too, Tsumugi.”

“No. No, I--”

The smaller girl shakes her head, “I’ve...I-I’ve made up my mind, Tsumugi. I don’t want - I-I don’t want to live.”

“Misa--”

“Besides,” she lets out a forced laugh herself, and there’s tears now, “I’ll be able to see Hiraki again, a-and I’ll tell Jiro everything you’ve done.”

Hiraki. Romance novelist. Misato and her had been very close - had this not been a killing game, Tsumugi speculated, they would have been more than friends.

Jiro. Ballroom dancer. The one Tsumugi was the closest to after the first trial. The one that died from the glass.

“Yeah, Rantaro!” Takaaki flashes a thumbs up, “I can tell Katashi you survived and that you’re gonna live on for us!”

Katashi. Surfer. The one that died first.

Rantaro burst into tears.

She finds herself following suit.

“Oh, I--” the lockpicker begins to take off their hand rings, “I don’t know if you’ll get these when you wake up in the next world, but, ah. I want you to have this, man. I guess...in this case, it’s the thought that counts?” They laugh airily, like that’s not what they’re going to be remembered by and like they’re not going to die soon.

Rantaro’s tears turn into sobbing and he pulls the lockpicker close.

She's crumbling and falling apart when Misato hands her the orange bow worn in her hair, and shakes and shakes as Misato gently wipes her tears away with her handkerchief.

(She tunes out Enoshima cackling and opening a corridor where all the executions have been held, and cries even harder when Takaaki asks if she can send them off with a smile.)

She finds herself smiling through the tears, but it’s forced and Takaaki knows, but they give her a pat on the head anyways.

She watches through blurred eyesight and tear-stained glasses as Takaaki extends a hand towards Misato, and the two walk hand in hand towards what she knows will be their death.

She clutches Misato’s bow and sobs into Amami’s shirt when the the two are crushed with falling rocks. And when Izumi bids them goodbye and good luck and walks down the corridor alongside Monokuma, finally dressed as their own self, she sees that they’re not laughing anymore.

They’re not smiling anymore.  

* * *

She finds that the outside world is cold and has no warmth.

She does not keep Misato’s bow in the outside world. She does not have it and it never “existed” in the first place.

She finds that the outside world is as cruel and as bitter as she expected, except multiplied a hundred times over.

She finds that she is planned to be the mastermind and that Rantaro is planned on becoming the Ultimate Survivor.

They say that it would be absolutely despairing.

She thinks, it’s tiring.

They say that Amami and her are a pair, and that past seasons only have one survivor, but since they won as a pair last season they would go as a pair again this season.

She watches season 51 and watches herself on the screen call people who she doesn’t know the status of, people who she doesn’t even know are alive or not, ‘friends’.

She doesn’t remember ever knowing them. All she remembers is her interactions with Rantaro Amami. But those memories are from the 52nd season.

She knows that things would be different in the 53rd season because this time she would have to be the one to put the whole game together.

She is told that the current Tsumugi Shirogane is to be killed off - not in the game, though - and rewritten and that she would become a different person in the killing game.

She thinks, great, because that means one more person in her body because there is the glass and the Tsumugi Shirogane who auditioned for Danganronpa and the Tsumugi Shirogane who was in the 51st season that only says Junko Enoshima and the Tsumugi Shirogane who was in the 52nd season who thinks she doesn’t deserve to live and clings to an orange bow that doesn’t exist anymore and the Tsumugi Shirogane who has the physical body but is an empty shell who is so, so tired.

She wants to get away from it all but a contract she signed when she was ignorant binds her to agreeing with whatever they say.

She doesn’t pay attention to introductions when the rest of the cast for the 53rd season arrive and she doesn’t make eye contact with Rantaro Amami because they both know that they will forget they knew each other and they both know these to-be Ultimate students didn’t know what they really signed up for.

She sits down in the seat, next to people who she will see die and people whose deaths she will be responsible for.

_I should have died alongside Takaaki and Misato._

They put the headset on her.

_Is this how Izumi felt?_

And that is Tsumugi Shirogane’s final thought in the real world before she is plunged into yet another season of the hell that she signed up for.

* * *

The Ultimate Cosplayer Tsumugi Shirogane is jolted awake when she hits the floor and she registers that this is how the season starts, falling out of a locker, and this is the season she is in charge of.

The cosplayer gets out of the locker hastily, and with a startle, realizes that she can faintly hear the voices of the past personalities that should have been rewritten at the back of her mind, faintly.

(She cannot ask if that was intentional or not, or if that was a flaw, because she is now in the world of Danganronpa.)

When she dusts her skirt off and they all collectively realize what is being worn, the seamstress at the back of her mind screams at the orange bow that was supposed to not exist anymore.

When the locker next to her starts rattling and the Ultimate Survivor Rantaro Amami falls out, the seamstress screams again. It’s as if there’s a thousand pin needles at the back of her mind, and that is her screaming.

And when Tsumugi Shirogane extends a hand to him, and he reaches with a hand that has rings on it, the seamstresses’ screaming turns into sobbing.

Loud.

(The cosplayer thinks she should plainly shut up. The glass agrees.)

“Ah, I’m Tsumugi Shirogane, the Ultimate Cosplayer. Nice to meet you.”

And Tsumugi Shirogane, the Ultimate Seamstress, thinks,

_I’m sorry._

* * *

(When the Ultimate Survivor falls out of the locker and is greeted by a blue-haired girl with glasses, he can’t help but think she looks a little familiar for a moment.)

* * *

The cosplayer decides that she hates Rantaro Amami, because whenever she looks at him the seamstress is sad, and it’s so very irritating.

The seamstress realizes that the cosplayer is a very petty person.

The cosplayer calls Amami a normie and tells him to backflip into a landmine and just die, and wants him to die, die, die so the seamstress would just shut up and stop being sad because every time she puts on her bow her sadness is enough.

The 51st season’s participant - the Ultimate Barista, she finds, only speaks when Tsumugi cosplays as Junko Enoshima, but even they shut up because they know they’re not in control. She wishes that the seamstress would follow suit, but alas.

Tsumugi Shirogane laughs and cackles at the footage of the look of utter despair on Rantaro’s face when he watches the survivor perk video on his Monopad in his room, and the glass pieces screams yell run when she laughs, and the barista and seamstress are too scared to speak when she is hunched over, laughing at Kaede Akamatsu and Shuichi Saihara when the former creates the perfect plan to pin a murder to, to set the game in motion.

* * *

Tsumugi Shirogane counts the thirty seconds down as she moves quickly and smashes the ball down on Rantaro Amami’s head, and he falls down holding his bloody Monopad, dead, dead, dead.

The seamstress is crying. The cosplayer is laughing.

She grabs the Survivor’s Perk Monopad and Kaede’s pitiful shot put ball, rolling the bloody murder weapon into place, dropping the pad on the desk and tossing the ball into the trash, and runs back to the girls washroom, and back to the kitchen.

Kirumi Toujou greets her, as does Korekiyo Shinguuji, and Miu Iruma is too busy with her invention to care.

Oh, little do they know, she thinks.

The body discovery announcement plays a few minutes afterwards.

* * *

Kaede Akamatsu is executed to death, her body crushed to bloody, bloody bits.

The barista wants to throw up, and the seamstress agrees. The glass is gone now.

Tsumugi Shirogane can’t contain the laughter in her soundproof room, as she laughs for what seems like hours and hours and hours.

Kaede Akamatsu was an idiot. God, what a fool! She thought _she_ could catch _her?_ Did she not think that the mastermind had a way of monitoring them? God!

Now, she was a dead idiot, and her body would be cleaned up by the Monokubs - whatever was left, that was!

And Rantaro Amami - the seamstresses’ poor, poor, Rantaro Amami. He knew people would come after him if word got out he was the Ultimate Survivor, and that he should hold the Survivors Perk Monopad near and dear to his heart.

A heart that wasn’t beating anymore, that is.

He thought that he could just waltz into her hidden room, didn’t he? God, what an absolute idiot. He didn’t even bring backup or tell anybody.

He walked right into two traps. Kaede Akamatsu’s and hers.

She laughs, and laughs more, and swears that she would start crying soon, because god - god! - she had just killed two, no, _three_ birds with one stone. Shut up the seamstress, shut up the barista, and set the game in motion.

* * *

When Hoshi Ryoma drowns and she watches the footage of the crime, and she thinks, everything is going to plan.

The seamstress tells her to backflip into a landmine, blow up, and die. She laughs.

* * *

When Kirumi Toujou screams and begins to run, for a moment she is caught off guard.

When she falls, the barista wants to vomit (and that’s quite an odd feeling, when your mind tells you that you want to vomit but her body says no and is perfectly fine) and the seamstress calls her a monster.

The glass agrees.

She ignores them.

* * *

Angie Yonaga got oh-so-close to resurrecting Rantaro Amami, and she laughs and cackles at the seamstress for getting her hopes up when she is found dead.

* * *

Tenko Chabashira dies and she does not see the footage who does it, since she doesn’t have enough time to excuse herself to the washroom and check the cameras.

She thinks a murder during investigation is something that is rare and relatively unused, though, and laughs to herself when she imagines the despair on Himiko Yumeno’s face.

* * *

When Korekiyo Shinguuji breaks, she thinks, ah, so the breakdown of the third trial culprit remains a pattern.

She’s almost a little disappointed, since he could have gotten away with it had he not killed Tenko.

The seamstress tells her that she wishes he got away with it so she would be dead. She thinks, ‘good point’.

* * *

The game world is confusing, and even if she can look at the code of everything that transpired to her it’s words and numbers that make no sense.

The seamstress laughs at her.

And then Miu Iruma dies and she shuts up.

* * *

Gonta Gokuhara is sentenced to death this time, and both the barista and seamstress cry.

She herself sheds some tears. They’re fake, but she had to act like she was close to Gonta, like she isn’t the ringmaster when he is set on fire.

* * *

There is a body in the press and she doesn’t know who it is. It makes her blood boil because that idiot Miu Iruma just had to complete three electrobombs that helped _somebody_ create a crime where she didn’t even know who died or who was the culprit.

There is a person in the Existal whom she doesn’t know the identity of and she wishes there were cameras in there.

This is the first time she is caught off guard, genuinely lost and unknowing what to do, before she curls and uncurls her fists and begins investigating.

* * *

Kokichi Ouma died in the press and it is Kaito Momota who is sent to space.

Damn Kokichi Ouma and his plan to create a murder that she didn’t know.

And damn Kaito Momota for dying to the virus instead of the execution.

But still, it’s her victory. Ouma didn’t even figure out she was the mastermind, and his plan ultimately failed, so it was practically in vain.

Momota died. He died, and even if it wasn’t from the execution it was from the virus, which was something she had implemented. So still, he died from her hands and she had still won.

She had still won.

The despair and tears on Maki Harukawa’s face proved it was a victory to her. The blinking back of tears on Shuichi Saihara’s face proved it was a victory to her. The act of being as sad as Kiibo could be proved it was a victory to her. And the tears shed by Himiko Yumeno said that she had gotten victory, victory, victory.

If this was a lottery, then people would be clapping and people would be happy for her and congratulating her. 

But it wasn't a lottery and nobody was clapping and nobody was happy.

It was a narrow victory. She laughs anyways.  

(And she was panicking slightly because of Kiibo’s antenna falling off, but that was fine.)

The seamstress tells her that she should have died. The barista agreed.

And then Kiibo began to use the robotic upgrade parts from his lab and her whole world stopped dead.

* * *

The glass is back. It’s back, and she’s choking up, and she thought it was gone but, no, apparently it decided to stay.

All - what was the number the seamstress had come up with? - eighteen hundred and ninety six pieces of glass were attached to the back of her throat.

“B-Because Junko Enoshima is…”

Monokuma screams at her. “Junko Enoshima is what?!”

And the Monokubz explode, and smoke fills the room, and she’s lost in the world of fiction again.

* * *

She thinks, this is as far as it goes.

The despair was fun while it lasted. But even she knew that when she didn’t have the makeup to cosplay as characters, that the bags under her eyes were unnaturally dark and her eyes looked hollow, dead, broken.

It wasn’t fun when four Ultimate students were arguing against her, coupled with the past Tsumugi Shirogane’s screaming at her from the back of her mind.

And they had chosen to sacrifice their lives?

Neither hope _nor_ despair?

What a boring, boring bunch these kids were.

(A dull thought at the back of her head. What made her different from them, was that she was too scared to use her voice and carve a path for herself. Wherever somebody led her, she would follow the path.)

(She realized that these survivors weren’t like her. None of them would be sent to the hell she went through, the hell that the seamstress had gone through, or the hell that the barista went through.)

She thinks, that’s good.

She’s not heartless, she’s just playing her part. Somewhere, deep, deep down, she realizes that these survivors aren’t just “not real” anymore. To her, they are very, very real, and that means that she has the deaths of twelve, real teenagers on her hands.

(And even if Team Danganronpa - damn them to hell - was the one that made her do so, she carried out the plan nonetheless.)

She’s a murderer. _Criminal,_ even _._

Her original planned execution was to be surrounded by red string, with people who shared the same name and same face dropping a shot put ball on her head, all with the chanting of her name (if they were supposed to represent her in the 51st and the 52nd season, then their name?) on repeat in the background.

(The barista and the seamstress would have enjoyed that, she thinks.)

So this execution by Kiibo is almost merciful.

She isn’t smiling, but she knows this could be worse.

(Nobody was even watching her execution anyways.)

 _You’re going to die how Takaaki, Misato, and Izumi died,_ the seamstress thinks.

She replies in her mind, _yeah._

The barista is quiet.

(There isn’t really much you can say.)

And, then, the moment before the pain sparks, the last thought in her head before her skull is crushed along with everything else is --

_I’ll see you all on the other side._

Pain. Excruciating pain, but somewhere in her death she realizes that this could hurt a lot more, had she not died the moment the rock made contact with her head.

Her world turns black.

* * *

The glass shattered into more shards, and shards turned to dust and dust turned to nothingness.

The barista, participant of the 51st season, who rarely spoke words that were more than a sentence, sleeps and dreams of a world where friends don’t betray each other and where she never signed up for the game.

The seamstress, participant of the 52nd season, who had survived with the cost of the lives of all her friends, who thought up the glass in her head, who clung to an orange bow and sobbed when Rantaro Amami died, dreams of a historian, a lockpicker, a calligrapher, and an adventurer.

The cosplayer, mastermind and ringleader of the 53rd season, who was petty and plain and was responsible for the deaths of so many doesn’t dream. Their sleep is empty and black and full of spite.

And the Tsumugi Shirogane who was left, who was to watch three seasons of a game show that had an actor who looked identical to her, the Tsumugi Shirogane who would be dubbed a fan favorite, a survivor, a monster, and a villain all at once stirs in her sleep, and,

And the Tsumugi Shirogane who cannot remember wakes.

**Author's Note:**

> ;3c hey i love to suffer. (also no beta reader we die like fucking men) 
> 
> i love. tsumugi shirogane. so much. she's a definite fav 
> 
> HUUUUHGHS BUT. YEAH I DIDN'T EXPECT THIS TO TURN INTO LIKE 8.9K CHARACTER STUDY BUT HERE I AM. i honestly. didn't plan for the symbolism with the glass to be there until i wrote it and thought 'huh i can go somewhere with this' and you know what i guess that's just how i write now. god. i had also originally planned to end it with tsumugi waking up in the locker, and then i thought, 'but wait, i can make this so much worse' and. yeah. wrote like,, another 4k words h 
> 
> but!! i'm sure you've probably guessed but since i love to explain,, the glass symbolized how fragile she really was, and "the glass" was basically everything tsumugi deemed negative about her. ex, glass in her brain = negative in her brain = negative thoughts in her brain. she likely started to call the negative things "glass" after jiro, the ballroom dancer who tsumugi was super close to, choked to death on glass, so glass became extremely negative and she began to view it as the thing that killed jiro, and the thing that was slowly killing her. 
> 
> anyways, this a/n is getting a little long so i'll end it here but!! my tumblr is @wrenkos if you!! wanna scream about tsumugi or rantaro or literally anything about v3 with me hit me the heck up dude. want me to yell about symbolism w you at 2 am? i'm your guy. 
> 
> as always!! comments and kudos are really supportive !! aaaa


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